Oregon Public Broadcasting

For little leaguers with big league dreams, spring means only one thing: play ball!  Commentator Bob Balmer remembers those days well, and recalls the lessons he learned from his best coaches.

On a recent sunny Saturday I was at a coffee shop thinking “What a fine day for baseball.” Then raindrops started to ricochet off the street like tiny ball bearings.  At a nearby table someone said, “It’s a five minute shower and then the sun will come out.”

Now I was really thinking about baseball -- not professional baseball, but little league baseball in Oregon where, to ballplayers, April is indeed the cruelest month. 

In the spring when I was young I’d wake up and look outside my bedroom window.  If sunlight burnished the neighbor’s golden chain tree, I knew that the day might  -- just might --  be dry enough to play a little ball.

Nostalgia is a capricious drug, but I drank it anyway. And after I swallowed it, I peeked into the corners of those little league days. As I did, I thought about my coaches and what impressions they left on me. 

My first coach was a nurturer.  He praised and taught in a voice that resonated with a lullaby’s sweetness.  A player, even a player who messed up, knew Coach cared about him.

A man who clapped your back and yelled “good job” when you did something right -- that was my second coach.   However, if a player made mistake, he immediately gave a respectful lesson on how to catch a ball or swing a bat.  I wanted to please him, not out of fear, but out of respect.

Of course, not all coaches come from the same cloth.  If someone made a mistake, my third coach raised his voice, and more than once swore.   Today I wonder if he should have coached little league.   Let the older players deal with such intensity.  Let the little guys play and learn and even laugh.

My grandson is nine months old now, and I imagine that someday he’ll try organized sports.  When I consider this, I think of a friend of mine who coaches his daughter’s soccer team.  He begins each game like this.   The team gathers around him, and after the players count three, two, one, they yell:  Have Fun!

Sounds good to me!

At their best little league sports plant the seeds of fun and learning. And those seeds are cultivated by a parent, and a coach. Such a combination is enough to make a young ballplayer survey a golden chain tree and hope that today is the day the rain will stop and he’ll go to the ball field, a glove on one hand a smile on his face.